WHY SEPTEMBER IS THE BEST TIME FOR A FRESH START

There’s something about September, whether it’s the hang-over of a new school year or the changing of the seasons (I’ve always been more of an autumn-winter girl than a spring-summer one), but I’ve always thought of September as a much better time of year to set yourself some goals or resolutions to help get your life in order.

As a child, I loved the end of summer ritual of my mum taking me to the shops to get shiny, new stationary for school and seeing my new, freshly pressed uniform hanging up in the wardrobe. It always made me feel like this was the year where I’d be totally organised, never have any crossings out in my school notebooks and become the sort of person who did her homework the day it was set, rather than the night before it needed to be handed in – I always failed miserably on that last one!

But that fresh start feeling has never left me. I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s resolutions. Settings goals on the January 1st has always seemed like setting yourself up for failure. You usually still have a day or two of holiday left before you’re back at work and, frankly, there’s probably still loads of leftover food and booze to get through, it’s usually so cold you have no motivation to start up a new exercise regime and you’re so skint from all the festive seasons excess that you have no disposable income to spend on making new plans happen.

For most people, September follows a summer of lazy BBQ’s with friends, a couple of weeks off work for a holiday and some sunshine and generally just feeling a bit more relaxed and refreshed which really makes it the perfect time to start afresh.

The end of summer brings with it renewed motivation, you’ve returned from holiday and you feel ready and raring to go again. If you’ve got a goal to work towards – losing weight, saving for a mortgage, finally getting your house de-cluttered – make September the month that you’ll make a plan and start achieving this.

Here are my goals, that I want to make a start on in September.

DECLUTTERQuite simply, I have too much stuff. Clothes that no longer fit me, shampoo that didn’t work for my hair type that I’ve held on to, half a dozen boxes of plasters that all only have one or two actually left in.

I want to purge and get myself organised – in an “a place for everything, and everything in it’s place” kind of way.

I actually plan on doing a blog series in September as my Month of De-cluttering so watch this space!

SET UP A HOUSEWORK / CLEANING PLANI’ve got a lot better over the past year at keeping on top of cleaning but there is still room for improvement.

Partly because living alone now means there is far less mess and partly because some ongoing health issues have meant that I’ve come to the realisation that I’m currently just not capable of doing massive cleaning sessions and need to stick to a little and often approach to keeping on top of housework. Otherwise everything goes downhill super quickly. I’d like to have a set list of tasks to do each day to keep me on track and to make sure nothing gets overlooked.

(Full disclosure, I’m very lucky that I have friends and family who offer amazing help and really step in when my health issues mean I simply can’t get things done that I need to. I definitely wouldn’t be able to try and put a plan in place to keep on top of cleaning if it wasn’t for the things they do to help me out when I need it. All the heart eyed emoji’s for them!)

HEALTHY EATINGOr perhaps for me this should be called organised eating.

Last year I lost 2 1/2 stone by following Slimming World. This year, and again – a lot to do with those pesky health issues, I’ve put nearly 1 1/2 stone back on. When you struggle to physically cook for yourself for a prolonged period of time you find yourself relying on takeaways and convenience food and that inevitably is going to take it’s toll.

So, I want to get back to planning my meals and eating a lot more healthily. I prefer to focus on how I feel or how my clothes fit, rather than set arbitrary weight targets but I think it’s safe to say I’d aim for losing about 2 stone.

I actually re-joined Slimming World two weeks ago and have lost 4lbs so far, although I haven’t strictly followed it so there is definite room for improvement. By September, I’d like to have a system of meal planning in place so I don’t fall back into bad habits on the days where cooking is a real struggle for me.

And there they are. My “fresh start” aims to put in place for September. Simple and, in theory, easily achievable. Fingers crossed!

What do you think? Do you agree September is a good time for fresh starts? Do you have any goals you’d like to start working towards?